Research for the Real World

I was born in Bulgaria in 1981, grew up there until I was 18. The first eight years was during Communism, which ended in 1989. Suddenly, a lot of things disappeared, literally, from the supermarkets. There was almost no food available. And it was tough. At the same time, you see also a lot of equality between men and women. Both my parents were working, and that's something that I grew up with, so it comes very natural to me these days. Hence, I'm a working mommy. When it was time, for example, to apply for college, my parents couldn't afford to buy me SAT books. So what I did instead was I would go to the public library in downtown Sofia, and wait there for whenever the books were available from the previous person studying for those exams. A lot of my peers were talking about applying to US and UK colleges, because the education in Bulgaria was going down in terms of quality. Dartmouth admitted me, and also gave me full financial aid. I met a lot of brilliant professors. Ken French is there, he is one of the most rigorous, if not the most rigorous kind of professors in finance I know, but I learned a lot from him in terms of how to do empirical research in finance. I went on Wall Street to do an internship. It was quite exhaustive, a lot of number crunching. So I didn't find it very rewarding intellectually. When I came back to Dartmouth in the fall, I told Ken I wanted to work on topics that have tangible, important real-world implications. So he recommended that I consider Dimensional. One thing that really excites me about my work here is the research part of it. The ability to do science, to discover answers to questions that have no answers yet. We are very honest about our research, honest about what we find in the data and we do not find in the data. The most rewarding, though, is when you go to bed, to know that today, you've done something good for our clients. Dimensional stands out to me as a firm that's extremely ethical. The firm has a noble mission to help people achieve their investment goals. Growing up in Bulgaria taught me to work hard, to organize my time very well, to be very efficient, and to be appreciative of what I have. Every day, honestly, when I wake up, I'm actually thankful for the house and family I have, for being healthy, and for being able to go to work and do something that I really feel proud of.